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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a 2.5 year old who doesn’t use a high chair anymore so she’ll sit for maybe 5 minutes at a time to gobble down food, run around and play, gobbled down more food, rinse and repeat.

When she sat in a high chair she would stay for a solid 30-45 minutes, if she was hungry and occupied.

I will say that while I should probably be instilling sitting at the table to eat for longer than five minutes, I really like the idea of encouraging her to eat only when she feels hungry.  I guess that is more important to me personally.[/quote]

This is the OP - we don't let them run around and come back to eat, that is a hard and fast rule for us. They'll eat at the table until they're done with their dinner, and once they get down they can't come back for more food. They do come back to us for when they leave for things like "Please open this marker for me" or "Brother took my toy!"  The reason we let them get down is because we don't enforce plate-cleaning. When they're no longer hungry, they can leave/stop eating. They just have to sit at the table until that point comes, and if they want to take a break and eat more later, they'll take that break at the table with us. I think the leaving when they're done part will likely change as they get older and we will eventually force them to stay and engage in more conversation. We find it pretty tough to force them to sit with us now when they're done eating - their behavior deteriorates because they are understandably bored, especially the littler guy who can't really have much of a conversation with us even in the best of circumstances (sometimes I'll make the 4 year old stay and tell me about his day if he eats too fast). The little one will start throwing food at the cat or hitting the table with his fork, etc, if we keep him at the table too long, so he is "done" even if he's still putting food in his mouth if that behavior starts. [/quote]

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